TV Station Prints and Fires a 3D Plastic Pistol. It Doesn’t Go Well.

We’ve been told by all the most reliable, intelligent and informed people in the both the media and politics that easily downloadable blueprints for 3D printable guns presents a clear and present danger to national security and the American way of life. In fact, the technology is such a threat that some politicians have even suggested 3D printers themselves should probably be registered or regulated.

It took 36-hours and $10 worth of plastic to print 13 pieces that he assembled into the pistol. That convenience is what worries critics. But the quality of fully printed plastic firearms is another issue.

In any case, all of the panic over Defense Distributed loosing its dangerous plans on the world had nothing to do with the actual “threat” the guns pose and everything to do with exposing their carefully constructed gun control regimes and generating some anti-gun press. Plus, it got them a restraining order preventing the company from releasing their files.

Not that the judge’s laughable order means anything at all here in the real world. 3D plans for firearms are and have been widely available online for years. You can get yours right here.

Of course, the Liberator pistol design isn’t the only plan out there. You can also print a very serviceable AR lower which tends to perform well.

Whatever. All of the hysterical hoplophobes tend to gloss over the fact that it’s always been perfectly legal to build your own guns at home. Whether you do it the low tech way with cheap, readily available Home Depot components or with a roughly $2000 (for now) 3D printer is utterly beside the point.

But let them keep continue sticking their bony little fingers in the ever-multiplying holes in the electronic dike. Maybe it makes them feel like they’re accomplishing something. As ever, they just can’t stop the signal.

That doesn’t look like it was made via a filament printer. It looks more like a laser/resin job that’s far more accurate but, typically, far less durable. Dead giveaway is the color of the material. Filament prints don’t tend to be clear.

Why did they choose a low infill and thin shell for the print? If I was using the parts for a mold I could see it but for something that is expected to hold together what they chose did what I would expect it to do, blow up.

Probably more than you asked for…… Slight nerd alert warning… I make jewelry and rebuild old lapidary and woodworking equipment so I use 3D printers for some parts and equipment like a mill and several lathes and such for others.
There are translucent plastics available for thermal printers. I do not think they used PLA, at least not for parts that needed to flex like the springs. PLA is brittle so the springs would have snapped. And when exposed to air adsorbs moisture so it becomes more brittle over time. Oddly it is stronger than ABS , ABS is not a very strong plastic. A polycarbonate filament or nylon with glass fibers would have been my choice for printing one but requires a heated bed and the printer enclosed as it is very prone to warp if there is even the slightest temperature variation. And nylon with glass fibers chews up print heads brass so you would need steel heads which are harder to find..They used a very low infill if you notice the open honeycomb effect inside the snapped pieces and the almost paperthin shell. I agree with others on here that video was made to scare potential makers of the gun from doing so. If I wanted it to burst I would use ABS with a low infill and thicker layers like the gun in the video. Problem is if you are at all familiar with 3D printing you notice the faults in how they did it. If I were to make one #1 it would be a lower pressure slower caliber, assuming marlin, infill would have been set to 100% with a cross 3D pattern , and all settings would have been for the thinnest layer deposited to make sure the layers adhere to the previous layer. And used a stronger less brittle filament. All stuff I noticed was not done in the video. I have no interested in printing a plastic gun but if I did you can bet your stars I would have fired it the same way they did. Now if I were to have printed it with a metal barrel insert or bored it to accept a metal barrel insert maybe I would trust it after initial firings and a good inspection after each firing but not a plastic weapon using today’s plastics.

Not at all, thanks for the attempt at educating a dullard like myself. There’s a lot more to it than I realized. For fiberglass-plastics, is the head assembly like a fiberglass rope chopper gun when doing fiberglass resin layups like when building boats?

Did they pay Lynn to make that gun?
Does Lynn have a manufacturer’s license?

I was hoping that employees of the TV station bought a printer and made it themselves.
After all, the headline says the TV station printed and fired it, when the TV station didn’t make it or fire it.
It feels like cheating to use a guy who is in the actual business of 3d printing to do the hard work for you.

I’m not knowledgable about the legal requirements, but doesn’t that plastic Liberator pistol require the a steel block (just over 1 cubic inch) to be installed in the receiver (in the hollow compartment in front of the trigger) before the components are installed to be compliant with metal detection requirement of the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988?

If so, did the did the manufacturer build and fire an illegal firearm? Did the news program pay him or reimburse him and thereby conspire to or pay for comission of an illegal act?

SkorpionFan just like an 80% receiver you cannot have others make it for you. You need to follow the same regulations used for an 80% receiver. If they paid him or had him make the part and it was done to more than 80% complete so they could finish it they broke the law. But since they are not us they can get away with it.

I remember as a kid my neighbors put a .32-20 primed case (no powder or bullet) into a Mattel Fanner 50 and pulled the trigger using a string. The cylinder and barrel were destroyed – just like the video here. One reason I’ve never liked “plastic” guns.

What do we think the odds are that the guy printed in using the wrong plastic intentionally knowing it would blow up? Thinking maybe he wanted to show the tech wasn’t anything to be worried about. He owns a 3D print shop so he clearly knows at least the basics of printing, and even a quick google would show him that 22lr would give him the best chance of it surviving firing. Either he wanted it to kaboom or he’s a moron

Few things, 1) they probably printed it up out of the wrong plastic. Most likely it was standard white PLA when they should have used nylon, ABS or PET. 2) The Liberator was designed by a law student, not an engineer. Cody Wilson did not design the Liberator to be mass produced, he designed it to cause panic among the political class as a way to instigate legal action which he could then bring what he hoped would be a Supreme Court challenge(reading between the lines from his interviews). 3)This is the biggy : Nobody cared about the Liberator.

The gun control crowd noticed it, and shrugged,because everyone thought it would blow up when you fired it.

Cody actually caused real panic with his AR15 receiver, and then with his 30 round stanag magazine. The magazine apparently took sixteen hours to design, was hosted for a few days along with the other DefCAD files, now exists endlessly as a torrent file, and has single handedly made mag bans pointless because you can make a working AR15 mag with a $300 Chinese knockoff printer and some piano wire for the spring.

Basically, when the gun control crowd set up America’s firearms laws around the serial numbered part they really screwed up. And now it’s way too late to change it.

The only truly effective form of gun control is actually the barrier of entry into manufacturing. As it stands right now, you can’t print a rifle bolt or barrel because you simply can’t print in hardened steel. You can’t print smokeless gun powder or boxer primers. Or a cartridge case that won’t explode.

What Cody has done is a temporary victory until the knowledge required to manufacture those things is as easy to download as a Liberator.

That’s part of the reason for the Ghost Gunner. A pre-made mill that can cut metal parts. If the equivalent lathe was made, between the two you could manufacture most firearms parts besides the barrel. And even a barrel wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to complete once you’ve got the barrel done on a lathe; an equivalent machine that could do cut rifling wouldn’t be a stretch.

I am aware of that. I am addressing the issue of how people would react to the afore mentioned scenario.

(explaining a joke often times makes it less funny)
We’ve heard stories of people melting or cutting an AR-15- or multiples of such- and making furniture or pieces of artwork with the metal.
In California they have banned plastic straws- it is now pretty much more of a crime to use a straw in your drink than it is to knowingly spread AIDS to other people.

The joke is melting plastic straws down and using the melted plastic to make 3d printed guns as a form of art/protest against the straw ban the same way people melted ARs down to protest “gun violence”

Note he specifies the six round version is made from certain plastic only with rifled barrel printed and the eight round version has rifled steel barrel tubes implanted in the cylinder. Also the grip handle contains sufficient added metal to insure it is detectable, as, theoretically, does Cody Wilson’s 3D printed Liberator.

The gun control people are gonna love it when ubiquitous nanotechnology makes it possible to make ANY military grade weapon out of whatever spare steel you happen to have laying around and maybe a few meters of dirt for the chemicals needed…

Not to mention nano-sized biological and chemical weapons which will be nearly invisible, self-replicating and capable of killing millions of people once released…unless you have the requisite nano-protection.

Might take a few more decades but as they say, you can’t stop the signal.

as i have said many times “you can fix broke but you can not fix stupid” if you do not know the difference between a smooth bore and a rifle you better stick to a bow and arrow. when you build a firearm, you had better take some intensive classes in metallurgy,physics,and hydraulics. then take up gunsmithing..the average breech pressure of a hand gun is in the vicinity of 80,000pounds per square inch. that is with a barrel of the proper diameter inside. two thousands too small and you have a very good hand grenade .you better stick to plastic ww2 models…

“The warning, issued jointly by Healey and a number of the Commonwealth’s law enforcement lobby groups, holds that “creation, transfer, or possession” of a gun made with a 3D printer can open an individual to both criminal and civil liability under Massachusetts law. “These 3D-printed weapons will be used to evade Massachusetts’ strong gun laws, and my office and our law enforcement partners will do everything we can to keep deadly homemade weapons off our streets and out of our schools,” said Healey in a statement.”

THE MASS HYSTERIA by lawmakers, judges. and police over 3D printed gun plans and gun blueprints being available to citizens via the internet says only one thing to me.
And that is these judges and lawmakers and police have exposed not only their ignorance of current federal firearm laws but an overall ignorance of the what information is publically available via the internet, US patent office, public libraries, and the US government and military agencies.
Their ignorance demonstrates to me these people lack the most basic qualifications of their jobs. They do not deserve to possess the power and authority they hold over citizens.
Of note is that those who lawmakers and judges and police have created the biggest noise over Home made plastic guns all are from the communist states and cities who deny their citizens the most basic of natural human rights, the right to the unrestricted bearance of arms.